Yes it is, 4 x BM1397 chips

Phew!!! My 4-chip board is assembled now and at least it didn't go up in flames . So its time bring out the Oscilloscope and start debugging and tracing , its going to be fun i hope

Skot, NebulaMiner or N0nce , Has any of you managed coding the ESP_Miner and got to it to where it can be used for testing BM1397 boards ?. I am just starting on it.

i have been trying different solder pastes that i have for BM1397 Chips.

What is the recommended type of Solder Paste to use  for BM1397 chips that is very good and is reliable on this chips when you consider the high temps they will be under during operations?

Yes, i think its required for the programming of ESP32 chips. One end Tag-Connect "TC2030-IDC-NL PLUG-OF-NAILS " cable connects to PCB Board and other end connects to ESP-Prog board PROG 2.54 mm interface ( Program interface with 2.54 mm (0.1”) pin pitch ) and the ESP-Prog board is then connected to your PC or Laptop using Mini USB on the board for Programming.

I am not sure if , at the moment , there is a better way to program ESP32 chips directly using USB without going through ESP-Prog board.

Yes , i think that's about right if you include all costs for 1-Chip it will come to around  a total $70 per board for 5 board assemblies

==>  $30 to 45 (other PCB Parts) + $20 to 28 (New BM1397 chip) + $? PCB Assembly (Yourself or/+ At Factory ) + $20 (Shipping) == Min Total Cost  $70

This will vary a lot depending on availability of parts and whether you're assembling them yourself or at the factory. If doing an assembly at the Factory you can add another $50 to $70 per board for PCB assembly on top of the initial minimum of around $70 per 1-Chip board

NOTE: Persistent Inventory shortages are making production price per board spike because the parts with small or no inventory will tend spike between  40% to 300%

I think if you add the total production cost of PCB fab + PCB Assembly Time (by yourself or at the factory ) + PCB Parts + shipping . Starting with a batch of 5 pieces

NOTE: i am assuming no BOM part shortages in my prices.

1-Chip  == $70    / Per PCB Board
2-Chip  == $90    / Per PCB Board
4-Chip  == $125  / Per PCB Board



Obviously this costs can come down considerably once your streamline the parts on BOM, replacing parts which have inventory shortages with similar quality alternatives parts and order a bigger batch of say  100 or 200 or 500 per run.  I think we can lower the production cost to about

1-Chip  == $50    / Per PCB Board
2-Chip  == $70    / Per PCB Board
4-Chip  == $90    / Per PCB Board

when streamlined.

Not sure what other users are paying for their initial total prototype PCB cost. Because of shortages of some major parts the prices will differ considerably. There are only about 10 parts that are good to have but all the parts can be replaced with similar alternatives if you can figure it out.

That's great skot. There is a persistent shortage of parts especially US designed parts.

Waiting for version 3 of my modified boards  ( 4-Chip, 2-Chip & 1-Chip) . For the 1-chip board similar to bitaxeMax i run into inventory shortage for some parts especially from Texas instruments for assembly so i did have to change design and some parts. For the 4-Chip and 2-Chip, i used a different design and parts so i was ok.

starting to work on Rust ESP Miner so that i can do some actual work and debugging, i am not an expert on Rust but a good programmer so i guess i can figure it out quickly if its easy to learn on the fly and program something useful.

i will keep working on it when i get a few hours during the week. I guess father duties doesn't allow that much time to do anything. 

That's amazing let's keep up the learning and great work.

For ESP32-C3 or EPS32-S3 Wifi, i have found out that using external antenna works better compared to internal/OnBoard antenna with a stronger wifi signal for mining . Not sure if anyone , has observed that

ESP32-S3 should simply act as a controller with drivers for communicating with BM1397 Chips  and running the Miner commands or software in this project. Just the same way Antminer S9, S17 & S19 all have controllers(Beaglebone, Zynq, etc ) for Mining with BM13xx chips. The main frustration is that the ESP32-XX microcontrollers are lacking in terms of some small RAM to actually do something useful without spending a lot of time rewriting or porting codebases.

As concerns the actual bitcoin mining client on ESP32-S3 , Has anyone attempted to port the cgminer 4.12 code  to rust so as to fit ESP32-S3 constraints . The Open Source Braiins OS is written in Rust supports using ARM Cortex CPU-based control boards like BeagleBone and has the drivers for all Bitamin S9, S17 & S19 Series Chips  . i don't see it supporting ESP32-S3 which has a dual-core XTensa LX7.

Braiins OS requires at least 200 MB of storage ( 105 MB used for OS ) and i guess less than 512MB of RAM to run. All this are constraints for ESP32-S3 , Even if we strip down the code and rewrite it  or use a different base as reference we will still need to have a fully fledged bitcoin mining client to avoid a lot of frustrations. I haven't come across any reference code online that has used ESP32-S3 / ESP32-WROVER (N16R8)  with Rust as a control board for antminer BM13xx chips.

Any Ideas ?  Skot has a good start ESP32-Miner repo created.

is anyone having issues getting INA260AIPWR modules from distributors ?  i have a couple of modified BitaxeMax_v2 boards from skot design and a work in progress xBit (Call it BitaxeMax4 with some routing attitude) but getting those modules is hard due to chip shortages. There are some unknown distributors that have them seem shady to me.

I might be mixing my Terminology. From the little info floating around, here is what one of the repair S17 manual  says

Voltage domain: The whole S17 Hash board has 15 voltage domains, and each voltage has 9 chips. The total voltage domain voltage is 18V. The voltage of each voltage domain is 1.2V. The 9 chips in the same voltage domain are powered in parallel, and then connected in series with other voltage domains after being connected in parallel.

and each voltage domain has only 1A 1.8V and 0.8V LDO powers 9 chips in a voltage domain.

I agree i don't think it would suck that much power for 4 x BM1397 chips in a single voltage domain connected in Parallel , if that's the case then i am getting a frying pan and some eggs, its going to get hot.

Only working with 4 x BM1397 in Series and i think 1 regulator should be able to do the job. The BM1397AG are ok depending on Binning but should be close enough in performance to use 1 regulator. If its a mix of BM1397xx Chips then use of multiple regulators would be ideal

Skot,  i got a few hours to continue working on the 4 x BM1397 chip design schematic , Do you know, if  using IO Level Shifter TXB0104RGYR and the SN74AXC1T45 (Single-Bit Dual-Supply Bus Transceiver With Configurable Voltage translation) can we just use one of each (1 x TXB0104RGYR and the 1 x SN74AXC1T45) to work with multiple 4 x BM1397 chips ? or each BM1397 chip will need a pair of this parts ?

Just FYI , both ESP32-­S3-­WROOM-­1 and ESP-C3 versions with onboard antenna do tend to have disconnects WiFi issues, The range isn't that great but will work. Just watchout for that. I like ESP32-­S3-­WROOM-­1 than C3 since its slightly better , cheaper and available

Sidehack, That's really impressive. Any chance of sharing the redesigned regulator schematic ? Well you are legend , and we thank you for the wisdom nuggets. What type of step-down regulators or controllers are you using in the redesign ? is it TPS40305 controller or a different ?

I think with TPS40305  controller from Ti  it's a 3-V to 20-V, 25-A, 1.2-MHz synchronous buck controller with FSS and if coupled with a Maxim DS4322 voltage adjuster as Skot did mention earlier that should get us close to achieving maximum performance without a lot of pain in power delivery system

What is the Maximum frequency of BM1397AG/AI that you have tested or have been tested by another user if you know ? is it 750 MHz or around 800 MHz  and is it stable with good cooling

Skot, What is the highest Hashrates you have been able to push the bitaxeMax so far  in your tests ?

Have you been able to run it above 545 MHz Frequency or above 350 GH++ ? Some say they can be pushed to above 500 GH but i have no confirmation apart from one dude who is using liquid cooling and gets about 500 GHashes/s @ 3A per chip or around 1.8V @ high current per chip with GekkoScience Compac-F USB Miner. That will be really hot on those BM1397 chips. I think a tiny or mini Liquid cooling  kit would help on that but it's overkill

i agree that Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is hard to get right now therefore very expensive and ESP32 is ideal but its lacking in necessary software support and resources. we don't want to reinvent the wheel every time we need to accomplish something.

There is big shortage of Pi Zero sized SBC units around the world . Normal prices are around USD$20 or less but due to chip shortages and high inflation around the world , they have shot up to US$ 45 to US$200 depending the specifications
 
I have been looking at Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W Clones  ( with 4GB RAM and 16GB Storage  with inbuilt WiFi) which support running standard Linux Distro like Ubuntu 20.04+ with or without a desktop :

The following come to mind (but also be careful about standard Linux Distro software support for the clones):

1.  Radxa Zero ( or upcoming Radxa Zero 2 ) ---- 64bit 4G RAM, 16GB eMMC, built-in WiFi ( around  US$50 ) --- Can run ubuntu 20.04 Server out-of-box with cgminer 4.12 --- You can order this in bulk
2.  Banana Pi M2 Zero BPI-M2 with H3 Allwinner -- 512 MB RAM, with Micro SD and built-in WiFi
3.  MangoPi MQ-Pro Allwinner D1  --- 1 GB RAM , with Micro SD and built-in WiFi
4.  Raspberry Pi Pico RP2040 -- will need to go through same issues as ESP32-C3-DevkitC-02


Radxa Zero also have variants with 512 MB, 1 GB, 2GB that are cheaper at around $39 or less.   With Chip shortages its hard to get lower cheap prices for anything that can do the job.

Check this or aliexpress
https://shop.allnetchina.cn/collections/frontpage/products/copy-of-radxa-zero?variant=39440872276070

i think that's just running JuiceVM emulation with ubuntu 9.  i think we don't need a vm if the native CPU supports standard Linux Distro . Instead i am thinking of Ubuntu 20.04 , 21.04 etc  with Cgminer 4.12 and that's supported on Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W and no need to do a lot of messing around .